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So 2017 was a pretty interesting year. On the non-gaming side for me it was fairly quiet though the year started (literally a few days into the year) with my father being diagnosed with cancer, and subsequently my father beating the shit out of said cancer and being cancer-free within a few months. Also I built a gaming PC on my own for the first time (before that I’d pay NCIX extra to build for me, never again). It’s super easy, everyone can and should do it… maybe I should do a quick post about that.

As far as gaming goes though… 2014, 2015, 2016 have all been pretty lame years for gaming. Game of the Year posts from me were difficult to write for the last few years because… Well, when there’s a year where there aren’t even 5 games good enough for the GotY award, you know it was a bad year. That said, 2017 said “fuck that here’s a ton of games” and I could’ve easily made a decent GotY post halfway through the year, with completely different games than what are on the list now, and it would still be a solid list. I did not have time to stop playing games this year, because there was always new stuff coming out. 2017 was a HUGE year for games, it was pure insanity.

So yeah… let’s go as per usual. A quick rant, then 5 almost-winners followed by the top GotY winner and finally a boatload of honorable mentions. Haven’t quite played enough trash this year for a “Trash of the Year” segment… So I won’t do that this time.

Rules: only games I played, and only games that came out this year (so no remasters or late ports, remakes are a grey area but I avoid them… example: the Crash trilogy wouldn’t be valid, but the Samus Returns remake would be). I may still put some as honorable mentions but they’re not valid for GotY candidacy.

Note: There’s several noteworthy 2017 games I haven’t played like Prey, Pyre, Evil Within 2, South Park, Hellblade, Battle Chasers: Nightwar, Divinity: Original Sin II, Torment: Tides of Numenera, Hand of Fate 2, For Honor, Dragon Quest Heroes II and a handful of others, so if you think they’re GotY and I don’t name them, know that I hold no ill will for these games.

Other note: I avoided games I knew would be shit like Shadows of War, Destiny 2, whatever Assassin’s Creed came out, Battlefront 2, Mass Effect Andromeda and several others… and know that I do hold ill will for these.

I reviewed Mario Kart 8 already. I gave the game decent praise, but re-reading my old review I was surprisingly mild on it. Replaying it again now I do feel I should’ve been more positive about it in the first place. It’s damn good. And I knew that back then, so I don’t know why my review on it is so lukewarm. Weird.

So I don’t really need to be talking about Deluxe, right? Well why not. But there’s no need for a full on review. I’ll just talk about it quickly.

March was quite the month for me. My dad got cancer surgery (he’s doing good), work being weird, Switch, a bunch of posts, too much Power Rangers, Switch, Nier, probably other games… It feels like this month lasted a year. But we’re right at the end and it’s time to talk about next month!

The count in April: 17 multiplats, a Switch release, 2 PS4 releases and a PC release. There’s a good number of interesting releases this month. I’m grabbing quite a few things.

So let’s talk about it!

Usual disclaimer: This includes either games I’m interested in, games that may be/become popular and random stuff in-between… Basically anything I feel bears mentioning. Probably missing stuff because game companies are shit about announcing release dates nowadays (and good at delaying games near release). Indies in particular are kinda random, or bad at making their games known (I get that it’s hard, but if I don’t see anything about your game before it comes out, I can’t very much highlight it). So if there’s no indie games here, it’s pretty normal. I won’t spend hours that I could be playing games watching videos for indie games I have no immediate interest in.

There it is, potentially the biggest game of the year. In a year of a surprisingly decent amount of really cool games games coming out, Zelda still ends up being at the top of the list for GotY contenders (and that was even before anyone had played it).

So as I was playing this game, and even after being done, I was wondering… how are you supposed to review this game? I feel any reviewer that talked in-depth about gameplay is doing it wrong, because the gameplay itself is something that is… spoilable. Basically, Breath of the Wild is a game that should be played “blind”. The less you know about it, the better the experience (at least in the first couple hours).

So what I’m attempting here, rather than an actual review, is a sort of… discussion of my thoughts on the game. I’ll include a big spoiler warning in before elements that I consider spoilers.

So that’s it for my GotY 2016 stuff. 2016 was a fairly weak year overall. So while I’m not SUPER EXCITED for 2017, there’s a handful of games I do have lots of hype for, so I figured I’d highlight some of those. Just for a quick fun post.

Let’s go and hope 2017 is a step up from the last 3 years. (note that this was written before the Switch event, so who knows if anything more is going to be officially announced there)

EDIT: I had to change this because Microsoft are stupid idiots and cancelled Scalebound… which might not be THAT big of a shame since it seems MS fucked with the development in the first place, as evidenced by a Kamiya tweet from 2015… but I’m still disappointed (also I did other small edits)

With the utter fail that was the Mighty No 9 kickstarter project as a whole (and other utter failures like Star Citizen and the Ouya), trust for Kickstarter games have gone way down. but it’s not like every Kickstarter project HAS to be bad, or fail to deliver. Despite what it seems like, there’s occasionally a KS project that does turn into am actual game, and within that group there’s some that are actually good.

Shantae: Half-Genie Hero was set to be one of these rare projects that would “for sure” end up being successful. And a couple days ago backers such as I got access to the game ahead of its release date (though that was following lots of delays, as is standard with KS projects).

I’m not SUPER familiar with Shantae (though I do have Risky’s Revenge and Pirate’s Curse on Steam, I haven’t actually played them), but I have seen a lot of them in reviews and such. I haven’t played the GBC game because it’s freakishly rare and expensive (though it IS on the 3DS Virtual Console so I might grab that eventually).

So here’s my early review of Shantae: Half-Genie Hero. Read on and see if this is one of those rare Kickstarter successes alongside the likes of Shovel Knight and a small handful of others!

So the Wii U is dead. No need to sugarcoat it. It’s done. The last exclusive it gets is freaking Paper Mario Sticker Star 2 (under a different, misleading name). Whatever. The announcements that Nintendo ended production and shipment of the console came just in time, really.

I figured I’d talk about the Wii U a bit, in anticipation of Nintendo’s second 8th gen home console and handheld (at once!). Yes, 8th gen, not 9th gen. Unless you’re weird and you want to call the PS4 Pro and Scorpio 9th gen.

I had the tendency to be a lot less negative about the Wii U than most people (some might call me a Nintendo fanboy even though that’s incorrect), though I can’t say I’m sad to see it go. I feel it was a system that didn’t get the hype it deserved, but also didn’t get the support it deserved. The Switch is where I was hoping they’d go with the Wii U, honestly.

Wow, lots of posts since the last release post, that’s quite nice. I want to try putting more stuff on here because… it’s fun, I like writing even if no one reads it. I do have some reviews coming still, and I’m still figuring out what kind of stuff I can write here.

So November… It gets a nice big “meh” from me as far as what I care about, and not a lot of games in general. 2 new pieces of hardware, 8 multiplats, 3 3DS games, 1 PS4 game and 2 PC releases. This is pretty pathetic for what should be the biggest month of the year every year. Do game companies just not care about the holiday season anymore?

Usual disclaimer: This includes either games I’m interested in, games that may be/become popular and random stuff in-between… Basically anything I feel bears mentioning. Probably missing stuff because game companies are shit about announcing release dates nowadays. Indies in particular are kinda random, or bad at making their games known. So if there’s no indie games here, it’s pretty normal. I’m just highlighting the most noteworthy stuff.

Alright, so Nintendo finally unveiled the codename NX, with the final name of Nintendo Switch.

While I wasn’t as critical of the Wii U as most people were, Nintendo made some extremely massive mistakes with it, may it be when they revealed it, when they launched it, and throughout its lifetime. The Nintendo Switch, I feel, needs to do a few things to be a success. I mean, it should be, but people have this tendency to hate Nintendo for literally no reason at all.

So here’s my reactions to the reveal trailer, and my thoughts on what Nintendo should do with the Switch from here on out. Basically my initial reaction, some impressions and a bunch of random thoughts.

September has been crazy, with DQ7 taking all my time and SMTIV Apocalypse staring at me and a couple other games I played. So I do have reviews on the way. I just need to have time to write stuff.

So October has a couple things: 1 Wii U piece of shit, 3 Vita releases, 1 PS4 piece of hardware (and some games I’m not listing), 17 multiplatform releases and 3 PC releases.

Usual disclaimer: This includes either games I’m interested in, games that may be/become popular and random stuff in-between… Basically anything I feel bears mentioning. Probably missing stuff because game companies are shit about announcing release dates nowadays. Indies in particular are kinda random, or bad at making their games known. So if there’s no indie games here, it’s pretty normal.